


Follow your inner moonlight

by Ingi



Series: Tales of the Rule of Three [2]
Category: Kill Your Darlings (2013)
Genre: Abusive David Kammerer, Allen Ginsberg Loves Lucien Carr, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Intercrural Sex, Kill Your Darlings (2013) References, Lucien Carr Doesn't Kill David Kammerer, Lucien Carr Has Issues, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Masturbation, Nipple Play, POV Lucien Carr, Recovery, Trauma, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 22:53:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11217936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ingi/pseuds/Ingi
Summary: Lucien kisses him back because he wants to.





	Follow your inner moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> These two are Harry and Draco reincarnated, I s2g.  
> Anyways, just a heads-up, I've borrowed some lines from the movie here and there, plus some poetry from writers mentioned in the movie.

Lucien kisses him back because he wants to.

There's a moment, only a moment, even if it feels eternal and stretches into infinity, in which Lucien is not himself and Allen is not Allen and they're just two mouths that want to devour each other. Then Lucien's skin starts to itch, and he can feel the moment desintegrating, but he draws back and Allen is looking at him and it's _different_ , somehow, it's not a look he's ever had directed at him. Well, yes, by Allen, before. But it's not a look he's ever had directed at him by someone who's kissed him. That's just not how it works.

And Lucien thinks, like an echo in not his voice but Allen's, _First thought, best thought_ , and lets Allen kiss him again, and this time neither of them draws back. If his skin is still itching, he cannot longer focus on it.

Until he hears Jack's voice, and he snaps back into himself so fast that he can't breathe. He remembers, all of the sudden, Allen's grip on his face just a second ago, how he'd tricked himself into it feeling safe and even _hot_ , when it shouldn't have been that way. So now the itch comes back in full force and the only thing Lucien wants anymore is tear his skin open, but that never works, so he runs.

 

* * *

 

He gets drunk. Awfully so.

He can hear himself saying _This is just the beginning, you know_ and _Your fault, Ginsy, it's all your fault_ like he's still back there with Allen and no one has been kissed yet, nothing has changed yet, and the funniest thing is he didn't mean it like that, when he said it, but he should've known. He should've known. It was foolish of him to expect anything else.

There's something in him that attracts this. There's something _wrong_ with him, something that perverts. It makes it so all the stories will eventually be the same, no matter how different they seemed at first. It's inevitable. That's why he only likes beginnings: at the start, it's easy to forget how it all goes. Lucien would call it hope, except that word's for children and dead poets who were too idealistic for the world; lying to himself would be a more correct term.

So he drinks, and drinks, and drinks, and does not think of Allen's face after his _Ten pages on Spengler's Decline of the West, due tomorrow_ line. He might not have a choice on how much he gives, but fuck if he won't at least choose when and at which price. It's always a matter of how much they can squeeze out of him, so he might as well get something in return.

He can see the same story unfolding again. And then, Allen breaks the circle.

 

* * *

 

"Lu," Allen says, walking into the room like he belongs there. No, not anymore. It was always meant to be temporary. "Your paper."

And Lucien can see it, the moment Allen will ask _Where are you going_ and he will tell him _To Paris_ , because it's the truth and it doesn't matter if he knows- no, Lucien _wants_ him to know, wants him to hurt, wants him to learn his place like David did. They might take everything from him, but _he_ 's the one in charge.

But Allen only stares at him, strangely silent and blank, and tears the goddamned paper to pieces.

Lucien stills. There's the certainty in him that he should speak; to say what, he doesn't know, but _speak_ , but the words won't come and Allen is quick to fill the silence, his eyes steady and unreadable, fixed on Lucien's.

"I'm not your new David," Allen says, slowly, and it has the strength of a knee to the stomach. Lucien stays upright by sheer force of will, but he holds onto the desk so tightly that his knuckles turn white. "I could feel myself falling in his place, you know?" Allen continues, still staring him down. "Like I was always meant to be there." His jaw tightens, and Lucien recognizes some of the emotions in his face, then. Rage. Hurt. "But I'm not meant to be there," Allen hisses, and steps forward. " _You_ put me there, Lucien. Or you were trying to."

"Me?" Lucien finally hears himself saying. His voice sounds strangely shrill, panicked. This is not how the story goes. "It isn't me, Allen. Life is round, remember? An endless circle. It's not my fault which role you get stuck with."

"Spare me," Allen replies, now openly furious. But he stays back, doesn't crowd into his space, like he's somehow learned every single thing David would do and is now stubbornly doing the exact opposite.

Lucien wants him to _burn_.

"You're the one who kissed me," he insists, low and mean. "You're the one who changed this, who chose this path. You got what you wanted, Ginsy."

And Allen- Allen's face falls, and here it is, this is _exactly_ like David, the pattern is reknitting itself as they speak, everything will be righted in a second.

"Love doesn't come with the price of freedom," Allen suddenly says. And that's when Lucien _gets it_ : David is only ever sorry for himself, but Allen, Allen is sorry for _him_. Lucien doesn't know what the normal reaction to that should be, but he's pretty sure it's not an almost unbearable urge to vomit. "Love and obsession are not the same."

"You kissed me because you wanted me," Lucien replies, moving behind the desk, trying not to make it look like he's hiding.

"Yes," Allen admits. "And no. I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you. I don't want to possess you, or use you, or hurt you."

"But you did."

Allen doesn't answer immediately, only watches him. Lucien hates the rabbit-like beat of his heart in his chest, how a desk between him and Allen isn't barrier enough and he wants to run but he's just standing there, frozen, like he's prey and Allen's the hunter, even with how obvious it is that the roles are reversed.

"Did it feel like I did?" Allen eventually asks.

Lucien thinks of that first eternal moment, Allen's hand cupping his face and his own desperation and hunger driving the kiss as much as Allen did if not more, but that doesn't really count, does it. He's always so good at beginnings. Not so good at what comes later.

"No one wants me unattached," Lucien says, hoarse, and it feels like making no sense and telling Allen yet another story that he hopes won't get used against him, it feels like telling Allen about David all over again. "No one wants me free. No one wants me... _me_."

And Allen could tell him that _he_ does, is probably getting ready to spit it out as soon as Lucien stops talking, but Lucien wouldn't believe him so maybe that's why instead there's another silence, this one shorter than the one before, until Allen gestures at him with both hands, the motion so small that it's barely there.

"Lu," he calls, softly. "Come here."

Lucien doesn't want to, not really, but he doesn't have any particular reason not to either, so he walks around the desk and closes the space between them in three long strides, stepping over the pieces of what used to be his paper on Spengler, chin high and hands trembling, until he's only a few inches away from Allen. And Allen doesn't touch him. He stares like he's drinking the sight of him, but he doesn't touch him, or try to kiss him again. It's a relief, cowardly as it feels, and it also bothers Lucien in a way he would've never expected.

"Let me tell you what I _don't_ want, then," Allen says. His gaze falls to Lucien's lips, very briefly, before rising again to meet his eyes. "I don't want an exchange. I don't want anything that isn't freely given."

The thing is, Lucien doesn't want another David. He just didn't know that was an option. And Allen seems to be waiting for something, an answer perhaps, and Lucien doesn't have anything left to give but this _is_ a beginning, in a way, and he thinks of Allen saying _I don't want to be the person they think I am_ and _You can't leave_ and there's light. Some, in any case. Maybe not sunlight, but moonlight, at least.

"You started something and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do next," Lucien whispers.

"Let's write us something beautiful," Allen replies, with the brightest smile Lucien has ever seen. And then, very quietly, "Can I kiss you?"

"Five pages on Butterfield's _Whig Interpretation of History_ ," Lucien says, trying to hide the way his voice is shaking, but Allen only grins wider.

"I will read you a poem," he offers instead.

"You will _write me_ a poem."

"A thousand," Allen says.

He raises a hand, slowly, with the palm open and vulnerable, and stops it a hair's breadth away from brushing Lucien's cheek. Lucien tilts his head forward just slightly, enough for them to touch. Allen cups his face, then, like he did that one first time, and he leans in and Lucien leans in too and they meet in the middle. The itch begins in Lucien's right shoulder blade, but doesn't spread, and it's terrifyingly easy to ignore in favor of Allen's hot mouth locked with his.

Allen kisses like he wants to devour him, but somehow it doesn't feel like that will end him. Allen takes and takes and takes and there's still the same Lucien left. Now, that's a trick to win the party over.

Lucien wants slow. Slow would be a first, and a first is kind of like a beginning, too. But he still grips Allen's shirt and _pulls_ until it tears open and buttons go flying everywhere, and then it's all a blur of kissing and pulling out clothes and walking without destination or seeing where they're going at all, and Lucien comes back to himself to find themselves naked and close enough to the bed that they can just throw themselves on it.

And they were close before, but now, now they're pressed together from head to toe and Lucien is holding Allen down on the mattress with his own weight and they're both hard, and Lucien is suddenly and horribly aware of how out of control everything is. He untangles his hands from Allen's hair and plants them on the bed instead, caging Allen, and pushes himself up. Perspective. It should change everything, but Lucien is looking down and all he can see is Allen, wide-eyed and flushed, still Allen. This is not how it's supposed to work. He perverts everything he touches. Allen should be gazing at him with half-adoration and half-fear, not- not with fondness and slow-burning desire, not like he's _seeing him_.

Lucien lowers himself back down, shaking, and buries his face in Allen's shoulder.

"Do you still love complicated?" he asks, refusing to notice how watery his voice sounds.

"Oh, I know this one," Allen replies. One of his hands is stroking Lucien's hair in a calming motion, like he's already done a couple of times before, but the other is repeating the movement on Lucien's bare back and leaving burning trails at its wake. The dichotomy lowers the itch of his skin to a low rumble, tames it until it's barely there at all. "If Lucien Carr is complicated, and I love Lucien Carr," Allen says, ignoring Lucien's startled sob, "then it follows that I love complicated."

"No wonder the ladies are all over you," Lucien says, pressing his lips to Allen's collarbone for a long, long moment. "If you always treat them with philosophical logic before sex," he continues, tellingly hoarse.

Allen laughs, muffling the sound in Lucien's hair. He embraces him with an arm and turns them over, and Lucien lets him, only expectant and wanting as he lands on his side, facing Allen, who pulls him closer. Lucien lets out a breath and nudges a leg between his. It's too hot for the season in this room, and oddly silent, only their breathing and the squeaking of the bed when they move too rashly, the firmness of Allen's flesh giving in under his fingertips.

"Can I touch you?" Allen says, just as Lucien wedges a hand between them to brush Allen's cock.

"Are you going to be asking these questions all the time?" Lucien bites out, tugging at his cock until he moans. "It's not an attractive quality, Ginsy."

"Would you rather have poetry?" Allen replies. Lucien can hear the grin in his voice, and then he can't hear or think anything, because Allen's hand finds his cock and strokes it without hurry and without fear, nothing but the selfish enjoyment of selflessness in his eyes. "Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another-"

"Whitman, of course," Lucien laughs. "Of course."

And he kisses Allen, hard, open-mouthed and starving, because he can and because he _wants_.

They're both panting when they pull apart, just enough to look at each other, their hands never stopping their movement on each other's cock, and when Allen starts mouthing the line of his jaw, Lucien tilts his head and lets him.

"Beloved, gaze in thine own heart," Allen whispers, his free hand slidding up Lucien's chest, brushing his nipples and ripping from his throat a sound so loud and raw that it can probably be heard in the whole university. "The holy tree is growing there." A long lick to both nipples, one first and then the other. "From joy the holy branches start." Nibbling, now, and the sounds Lucien is making are no longer human, but his dignity is placated by how Allen's words can barely be understood by now because of how breathless he is. "And all the trembling flowers they bear."

"Yeats," Lucien manages to hiss, and then laughs, half-hysterical. "Allen. Allen, please-" Another lick, Allen's fingernails gently scratching. Lucien covers Allen's hand with his own to still it, tries fruitlessly to recover his breath. "I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent."

"Rimbaud."

They kiss gently this time, but so deeply that Lucien forgets himself in the space between one breath and the next. The loss of self is not how he'd imagined it. It allows him to open his legs wider, press Allen's cock between his thighs and then release it, waiting for him to take the hint.

Allen inhales sharply, leans in, sucks a bruise in Lucien's neck. His thumb rubs over the head of Lucien's cock and Lucien's hips jerk up. They have to shift a bit to make it work, and Lucien ends up pulling Allen on top of him because the angle is just better, and every time Allen thrusts into his thighs, his cock rubs against Lucien's, not nearly enough to be anything but maddening, more flames to the fire. Then Allen takes his cock into his hand once again and there's no more poetry except for the silent one that their bodies make, no more words at all as Allen fucks Lucien's thighs and Lucien fucks Allen's hand and they fall further into each other until there's nothing else.

Lucien doesn't kiss Allen when he comes, or anything equally romantic and overdone. He does kiss him right after, though, with a scream still lodged in his throat, and manages to trap Allen's own moan inside his mouth while he shoots all over Lucien, adding to the mess sticking them together. They keep kissing until the shaking stops, and only dislodge their mouths because Lucien starts sobbing, as unexpected as it's ugly, and Allen takes Lucien's hands from his back and interlaces their fingers over the mattress, trapping Lucien with his own body, keeping him safe.

After a while, Lucien realizes Allen is crying, too, without making a sound, so he tilts his head forward and licks the tears away.

"We have to move, Ginsy," Lucien says, voice wrecked, suddenly remembering the night at Jack's house, the cat, the madman at the window. "David- he's going to come look for me."

He cleans them up with a scarf and they get dressed, not taking their eyes from each other. It's like the first time they met all over again, when Lucien thought _Oh_ and _Here he is_ the very moment he saw him, without really knowing why or what it meant. Beginnings. Everything is firsts with Allen. Everything is beginnings.

They go to Allen's room and fall into his bed, entangled.

"We can fuck again or we can sleep," Lucien yawns, voicing what they're both thinking. "But I have a paper to write, due today."

Allen's smile is close and wide and perfect.

"Just glue the pieces," he suggests, and Lucien snorts and actually considers it, but in the end they fall asleep anyway.

 

* * *

 

Lucien awakens to Allen leaving a trail of kisses down his neck.

When Lucien reaches to touch him, he feels cold and alien, like he went out and scrubbed himself clean of any marks Lucien could've left on him. Lucien rubs his face against Allen's, just in case, and holds onto his shoulders.

"Why the fuck aren't you in bed?" he hisses, still half-sleep, before his lips meet Allen's.

"I met David," Allen says, wrenching his mouth away, and Lucien can feel his heart skipping a beat. He doesn't want to know the expression he's making. "He'd been looking for me."

"For you?" Lucien asks, weakly.

"He couldn't find you," Allen replies, pulling away to take off his jacket, which Lucien hadn't even noticed he was wearing. "He wanted me to tell him where you were. Spewed a load of bullshit in the way. But-" he stops, stares straight into Lucien's startled eyes. "It was good to meet him. I can see now, better than ever, how our paths diverge."

Lucien breathes in and then breathes out. It doesn't seem to help much.

"Did you tell him?"

"Tell him what?" Allen raises a brow, slipping back into the bed, and Lucien automatically turns to face him and sneaks his hands under his shirt.

"Where I was."

"Oh, yes," Allen snorts. "I told him right where you were. In my bed."

Lucien examines his face, just for a second, and then laughs. Most of it is relief, and he's sure Allen knows.

They fall back into sleep. There are a thousand other things they could be doing, but right then, Lucien wouldn't choose anything else.

 

* * *

 

It's only next day that they get a call from the office of the New York district attorney.

"My father will be here to pay the bail soon," Bill says, unrepentantly calm. "But I wanted you to hear it from me, just in case."

"Bill, what the hell are you saying?" Lucien hisses. Allen is leaning onto him, and Lucien passes him the phone. He _is_ more used to talking with crazy people in the phone, after all. "Ask him what the hell he's saying," he orders Allen.

But Allen only frowns and takes Lucien's hand distractedly, confident on the empty corridors.

"David came to me last night," Bill repeats, loudly and clearly enough for Lucien to hear. "He couldn't find Lu and you wouldn't tell him where he was. Jack threw him out of his house as soon as he put a foot on the doorstep. We got drunk and went for a stroll through Riverside Park, and he fell into the Hudson River and drowned."

"Is that your story, Bill?" Lucien laughs, and doesn't care if he sounds deranged, because so does fucking William Seward Burroughs II.

He _knows_ how this works, broken circle or not, and it's not anything close to to this. It's never this easy. The bane of your existance doesn't just fall into a river in drunken shenanigans.

Bill must have heard him, because he says, quietly, "He was my friend."

That should probably reassure them, somehow, but Bill's always been so good at half-truths. Lucien's sure that investigations are being made as they speak, that they were spurred by Bill turning himself in, and that they won't find a single thing.

"It's over," Allen says.

He's holding the beeping phone in his free hand. Lucien can tell he doesn't mean the call, but he doesn't dare to believe it just yet.

They go to Jack's house and all three of them get spectacularly drunk while Edie watches, shaking her head and nursing the same glass of whiskey for hours. Jack drinks because his best friend has died in Anzio, full of shrapnel. Allen drinks because Lucien does, and because there's nothing else to do. Lucien drinks because... Lucien drinks because he doesn't know why he's drinking, but it feels like he must.

Bill arrives a few hours later, like he knew exactly where to find them. He sits on the armrest of the couch and takes a swig of the bottle they pass over without even asking what it is.

None of them bat an eyelash when Lucien rests his head on Allen's shoulder, as usual, but when Allen throws an arm around him and kisses him full on the mouth, maybe a _little_ too drunk, the most they get is Edie's raised eyebrows, Bill's knowing look, and Jack's startled guffaw.

 

* * *

 

David Kammerer's death is, of course, an accident.

Allen tells Lucien that, if he wants them to, they'll barge in the offices of the most important newspapers in the country and they'll tell the entire story, so David will be remembered exactly as he was. Lucien forbids them to do it, as they all knew he would. The most satisfying part of it is how David's death is, in fact, barely a footnote in The New York Times, designed to fill in the smallest blank square at the right of some equally unimportant news. It doesn't even make it to front page.

The closest _they_ get to ever discussing it again is a few days later, as Lucien and Allen are about to leave a bar much earlier than they usually would, and in response to their friends' desbelief, Lucien complains about a paper he needs to write.

"Well, it's never too late to learn to fucking write your own fucking papers," Bill says, already high on some fancy drug.

There's silence, or as much of it as there can be in a crowded bar at two in the morning, but only for a second.

"You better go already if you want to arrive before Christmas," Jack says. "At this point, you two even need help walking straight."

It takes them a beat to get the joke, if Jack even meant it like that, and then they're all howling with laughter as one. Allen and Lucien need some good twenty minutes to stumble their way out of the bar, and other twenty to get to Lucien's room.

Lucien makes a valiant attempt to get a head start on his paper, but it's downright impossible with Allen running his fingers through Lucien's hair and the whole drunk thing and the whole _we-really-need-to-fuck-right-now_ thing too.

Somehow, Lucien manages to wrestle Allen into the chair with him, even though they're mostly sitting on top of each other, and hands him a pencil and paper.

"Write me a poem," he tells him, petulantly.

And Allen laughs and gets to it, leaving Lucien to his paper. Neither of them advances much, but to be fair, it's pretty hard to write at all without looking at the paper even once, and they're too busy staring at each other and grinning to do so.

"Well, we're writing," Lucien says, anyway, and smiles. "But is it something beautiful?"

Allen stops the absent movement of his pencil, takes Lucien's hand in his. For another eternal, perfect moment they only lock gazes, and then they both lean in and meet in a kiss, slow and thorough.

"You know what, Lu," Allen says, once again looking at him in that way he does, like nothing else is even close to mattering as much, "I think it is."

 

 


End file.
